Continuing challenges in accounting;

              Continuing Challenges
in Accounting
by Oswald Nielsen
Oswald Nielsen, professor of accounting in the Graduate School
of Business at Stanford University, is a contributor to many busi­ness
and professional publications, and has lectured widely on
accounting and economic subjects. He is a graduate of the Uni­versity
of Chicago and holds the Ph.D. in Economics from the
University of Minnesota. A C.P.A. in the State of California, he
has had considerable years of experience in industrial accounting
and control, research, and education.
Dr. Nielsen is a member of the American Economic Association,
the Financial Executives Institute, the American Institute of Cer­tified
Public Accountants, the California Society of Certified Pub­lic
Accountants, the Budget Executives Institute, the National
Association of Accountants, and the American Accouuting
Association.
Some years ago, when an accounting professor was
asked why he did not choose to contribute to the literature
in his field, he responded that everything about account­ing
had already been written. Another man almost at the
age of retirement, who had contributed greatly to the
growth of managerial accounting, was overheard to re­mark
that if today's young men would stop trying to im­prove
accounting and realize that that had been done by
his generation, perhaps we could get somewhere. Although
these extreme expressions are enough to create suspicion
on the part of any thinking accountant, they also serve as
reminders that even among those engaged in accounting
activities, many are scarcely aware of how accounting is
growing to meet the needs of contemporary business. Nor
do some people realize that the challenges to accounting
are enough to induce talented men to apply insight and
inventiveness toward continued improvement. The follow­ing
paragraphs indicate something of the nature of the
growth already in progress. There are also suggestions on
how these developments are indicative of areas in which
the talents of accountants must be challenged to adapt
accounting to contemporary business problems.
Forces for Growth
One of the most outstanding qualities of accounting in
the last few years is the tremendous degree of development
in theory and the applications relative to it. Some of this
development has been injected by outside forces, such as
the mathematical analyst, who contributed the idea of
using operations research in business planning and deci­sion
making. Considerable growth, however, has been
generated within the profession itself. Included in the ac-
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